A lot of this movie is pretty messy but Shadows earns its reputation as the film that dubbed John Cassavetes the godfather of the American independent cinema movement. The jazzy, beatnik atmosphere is so good and the stories are so personal that we might as well have be watching the everyday exploits of a handful of regular New Yorkers who just happened to have a camera following them around. There’s also some remarkably natural chemistry flowing through the cast, but this should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Cassavetes’s actor-focused directorial work.